Ghalib Gandhi And The Gita

Author : Vivek Iyer
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781475150247
Total Pages : 294 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (52 download)

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Download or read book Gandhi, Ghalib and the Gita written by Vivek Iyer and published by . This book was released on 2012-04-04 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about three potent sources of modern Indian identity- viz. the Urdu poetry of Mirza Ghalib, the politics of Mahatma Gandhi and the philosophy of the Bhagvad Gita. What they have in common is 'meta-metaphoricity'- they take a metaphor for reality and construct another metaphor, itself to be taken as even more real, on that basis. Normally, this is a recipe for bad poetry, bad politics and bad religion. However, if Ghalib's poetry is read in the light of Ibn Arabi's concept of 'barzakh', or if the Gita is read in the light of Game Theory, then 'meta-metaphoricity' comes into its own. On the other hand, the reckless application of tendentious Western hermeneutics to Ghalib, Gandhi & the Gita creates a sort of slapstick comedy such that great savants end up making incredibly foolish and grotesque claims. Translations and commentaries on Ghalib, by stubbornly refusing to engage with his Islamic side, turn his lovely lyrics into something harsh, dissonant and bizarre. Similarly, Economists, like Nobel Laureate, Amartya Sen- who are thoroughly familiar with Game Theory- completely fail to understand its place in the Mahabharata. Thus, they end up saying very foolish things about the Gita. The case of Mahatma Gandhi is quite different. His 'meta-metaphoricity' was indeed a recipe for disaster because it turned its back on reality. Here, distinguished Professors make the mistake of ignoring the historical record to spin fantasies about Gandhi's true motivation- so as to gain currency for their own philosophical ideas. This book, 'Gandhi, Ghalib & the Gita', features original translations and commentaries on some of Ghalib's best loved Ghazals. While paying tribute to the sterling contribution of Prof. Shamsur Rehman Faruqi and Prof. Frances Pritchett, it takes issue with their methodological Secularism which scrupulously omits references to Islamic Scripture and the great Muslim Scholar-Saints who endowed the ghazal with a great Spiritual and Moral purpose. This approach is the opposite of the Indian tradition of promoting brotherly feeling between members of different creeds by appealing directly to the heart's univocity, rather than the head's delight in cerebral 'distinctions without a difference'. The Mahabharata is a text which displays a highly symmetric structure such that every episode and character has a 'dual'. To treat the Gita as a stand-alone text, especially if you ignore its Occasionalist metaphysics, is either to endorse a 'casteist' hierarchy or to equate Hinduism with the evils of caste based discrimination. If this were the 'natural' or 'canonical' way to read the Gita then, by all means, let the book be banned. However, such is not case. The Gita is a highly dramatic work and every utterance within it contains a sort of ironic pathos. Rather than representing God as a sort of puppet-master, it displays the Passion of God for His Creatures in an awe-inspiring and cathartic manner. The Mahabharata is the only ancient Epic which shows that the Just King must learn Game theory to properly discharge his duty. Yet, famous economists of Indian, that too Hindu, origin say very foolish things about the Gita. Truly- 'the blind spot of the savants constitutes the darkness of the age'. Turning to Mahatma Gandhi, and the 'Gandhian' Anna Hazare, is their success in politics attributable to purity of principle or to a corrupt sort of 'interessement mechanism'- i.e. the peddling of a nostrum by means of relentless self-publicity? The answer to this question may not be pleasant to hear, but the question must be posed.